'Welcome to Night Vale': Where supernatural is super normal

In this small southwestern desert town, Glow Clouds and shadow governments are an everyday thing. There's a five-headed dragon and the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home.

Mystified? Just keep listening.

The "Welcome to Night Vale" podcast has been described as Lake Wobegon meets "The X-Files."

Now, "Night Vale" creators Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink have turned their supernatural stories into a novel of the same name. Cranor and Fink joined MPR News host Kerri Miller for Talking Volumes, where they discussed their new book and their eerie inspirations.

The writing partners first met six years ago, and promptly wrote and performed a play together in New York City's East Village. Their experience on the stage has indelibly shaped "Night Vale": It's as much a performance piece as a podcast. They've clocked over 150 live "Night Vale" shows in the last few years.

But it's not all life on the stage. Fink, whose father was a musician, said he learned at a young age what it was like to be a working artist.

"If you want to be a working artist, it means that 95 percent of the time you're not doing art," Fink said. "That 95 percent you're on phones calls and you're doing Excel sheets and you're figuring out budgets. And that's okay. That's the price of having that 5 percent of your time in which you get to do your art."

To hear the full interview with "Welcome to Night Vale" creators and authors Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, use the audio link above. The interview was the second show in the 2015 season of Talking Volumes.